"Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as dog does his master's chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone, gnaw at it, bring it, unearth it, and gnaw it still." --Henry David Thoreau

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Friday, September 02, 2005

City destroyed and people abandoned

America’s media usually just pisses me off. I am of the school of thought that they are not liberal at all especially when it comes to (obviously) to FOX News. I have been watching CNN as much as possible and I believe they are doing one of the best jobs I have ever seen in television journalism. They are actually asking federal officials real questions, calling them on bull shit and letting real people talk about what is happening. Hell, I think we’d be doing a hell of a lot better if Wolf Blitzer was coordinating the whole effort as he seems to know more about what was going on than our own officials.

I continue to get angrier from every news article I read, report I see or piece on NPR that describes what can only be called the biggest clusterfuck in recent American history. As a friend of mine pointed out, it took Congress two hours to get their happy asses back to DC to vote on some on keeping one woman alive, but when we have tens of thousands of people displaced and dying it takes us four days to get it together. It’s just disgusting. This disaster is exactly the reason I pay taxes. I want to help people when they are most in need. To lose everything—family, friends, home, employment, education—is a feeling I can’t even fathom.

What breaks my heart even more about this disaster is that the people most impacted are those in the poorer areas of New Orleans. Certainly I care about eveyone from the richest to the poorest there, but the image of people standing on basically shanty houses to begin with and then losing everything when they barely had anything—it disgusts me. Maybe this disaster will let people (and in particular Republicans as they seem to be the first to cut the programs that help the poor first) be aware that there are millions of people on the edge of nothing and sometimes it takes a hurricane and sometimes it just takes losing a job to take everything away.

While I agree with your sentiments (that someone fumbled the ball on this one) and that nobody seems to be in control, know what they are doing, or getting things organized... Please realize that there is probably 150,000 people who are scattered across 90 square miles of flooded region. And that's just New Orleans, nevermind Biloxi, the Gulf Coast and Pascagoula, etc. The thought of 65,000 people at FexEx field is like, "shit this is a hell of alot of people." Even at the Astrodome, where there is about 11,000 people, the logistics of it is a nightmare (that's 33,000 meals in 10 hours). Some of the "leaders" have screwed up, weren't prepared, do not have a plan, etc. But for tactical people, it's gotta be a mess (I'm sure there are rescue pilots who are flying on no sleep).